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Hey fellas, I tryed searching the forusm to see a related topic alreaddy covering this but to no avail. Maybe you can help me out.

I've heard mixed opinions about magazine springs and what happens to them overtime when kept fully loaded. On one hand, i'm not engineer, but it makes sense to me mechanically speaking a spring will become less powerful when kept fully loaded for long durations of time. This could cause a misfeed and jam the gun. Therefore, they advise to keep magazines only partially loaded.

On the other hand, I heard that steel springs don't have 'memory,' and that they won't be affected by long periods of loadedness(is that a word?). Also, I heard that constantly keeping it loaded for a little bit and then unloading it to give it a 'break' from compression will actually wear down your spring faster than keeping it loaded all the time.

Thoughts or opinions? Also, any factual data to back it up once and foreall would be awesome.

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I have heard multiple times, as Nova has just posted, that holding a spring under normal compression will NOT damage it nor cause it to lose any amount of its potential energy. Only through constant cycling would the spring eventually fail.

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Someone over on TheHighRoad.org said that they found a 1911 that belonged to either their father or grandfather, that had been loaded since WWII, and it shot flawlessly at the range even with the mags that had been loaded all that time. I used to worry about leaving mags loaded, but after reading all of these things, I dont sweat it.

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One of the members here who is studying or has a degree in metallurgy (I don't remember who it was ) wrote an excellent explanation in a thread about why keeping mags fully loaded (spring compressed) did not damage it, but I'll be darned if I can find it now. But yes, experts say that it is the cycling, not the continuous compression that wears out a spring.

Bob Owens @ Bearing Arms (paraphrased): "These people aren't against violence; they're very much in favor of violence. They're against armed resistance."

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deepdiver wrote:

But yes, experts say that it is the cycling, not the continuous compression that wears out a spring.

Not even that will wear out a spring.

For some years there was a wristwatch that used an electronic oscillator to time a mechanical movement, IOW maybe the last watch in which you could see the components function. It featured a spring vibrating at sonic frequencies - for years - without wearing out.

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There's such a thing as having mags that AREN'T loaded to full capacity all the time?!?!?!?

I've been told by many people who "think they are in-the-know" that I need to download my GLOCK mags by two or three rounds so that they won't jam or become fatigued. I have never listened to those people that by suggesting such things basically say that they know more about how glock's mags (or any mags) than Gaston's whole engineering team.

A G17 is designed, manufactured, advertised and has proven that is is meant to be loaded with 17 rounds in the mag (plus one in the chamber). That's the only way it will ever be.

We can figure out how to put an accurate and reliablelaser in a grip housing that activates instinctively, but we can't figure out how to bend springs so they can hold the amount of rounds that will actually fit in said mag????? C'mon!

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I keep ALL (about 60 total) my mags loaded to capacity at all times (other than cleaning, mag changes at the range etc.)....some of them have been with me for 25+ years and have never failed.
Not to say that I've never owned a bad mag, just that I didn't own one for long.....if it's not reliable, I either fix it or destroy it. I've never found a "mag issue" to be the spring, it's always the follower or the feed lips.

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I also keep all my mags loaded (double stack 16-round 9mm)x3 for about 4 years on and off...and the shell extractor mechanism in the gun has had to be replaced and my springs are still going strong. lol:celebrate